Photomolecular effect: Visible light interaction with air-water interface.

ABSTRACT: Although water is almost transparent to visible light, we demonstrate that the air-water interface interacts strongly with visible light via what we hypothesize as the photomolecular effect. In this effect, transverse-magnetic polarized photons cleave off water clusters from the air-water interface. We use 14 different experiments to demonstrate the existence of this effect and its dependence on the wavelength, incident angle, and polarization of visible light. We further demonstrate that visible light heats up thin fogs, suggesting that this process can impact weather, climate, and the earth's water cycle and that it provides a mechanism to resolve the long-standing puzzle of larger measured clouds absorption to solar radiation than theory could predict based on bulk water optical constan

SUBMITTER: Lv G 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11067046 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature